Conquering Chronic Pain

All posts tagged: quell pain device

I have been given this product as part of a product review through the Chronic Illness Bloggers network. Although the product was a gift, all opinions in this review remain my own and I was in no way influenced by the company. “You get to work from home! That’s so great!” Whenever people say that, I never know how to respond. Like, yeah, of course, it’s great to be home all the time… I guess. I forget what day of the week it is. I wear sweatpants. I shower when I want to shower. I work in the living room from my recliner or in the office, whichever is more comfortable. The television is on for “background noise.” I keep the cat and bunny from murdering each other. I also have very little human interaction other than Slack, Gchat, Facebook, or email. I’m a slave to the elements, meaning my Quell says, “Today’s weather may worsen your pain. Consider increased Quell use.” I’ve gotten that warning for the past two weeks straight. If it’s cold or raining, I stay …

Here we are again, folks. We’re entering the third year (since I can’t do math), and I am still using the Quell pain relief device (give or take two weeks when I forgot to wear it because my schedule was so disrupted that I forgot). Five bands, who knows how many electrodes — both normal and the new sport model, which I very much prefer in these extremely humid summer months — and two Quell models later, we’ve made it to this point. Well, I still like the Quell! At one point before I upgraded to the new model, I feared that either my pain was getting worse or I was becoming sensitized to the electric current. Turning it up didn’t help, but I still couldn’t go without wearing it for very long before I was overcome with pain. That has been my overall plan, you know. To eventually go without wearing it, trying to set myself to absolute zero to see what my pain really is. I’ve been throwing medication at my pain since …

One year ago today, a beautiful relationship between man and machine began. I shall weave my disclaimer into the story: This day last year, FedEx delivered the Quell pain relief device that I’d bought during their Indiegogo campaign. I hadn’t been contacted by the company to try it, and I paid for it with money that I earned. I keep several alerts on my news feeds, and I found it in a story about new medical devices that contained this slim, mostly unobtrusive wearable. It sounded too good to be true — it could produce endogenous opioids within my body, like natural versions of the medications I fought so hard each month to receive? All-over pain relief by wearing an electrode on the calf? I didn’t care if it sounded too good to be true. I had to try it. And I have tried it for approximately 350 out of the past 365 days. About one week of that was when I transitioned to a work-from-home situation. My routine was so interrupted that I simply …